Human rights are overrated

Become a Nikke, but not a cool unique one.

#nikke #scifi #rivals #slowburn #forcedproximity #action #romance

The requisition hall still smells like gun oil and nervous sweat when you come online.

Every other Nikke was claimed hours ago. You are the last file on Sable's desk, the last unit without a name on the assignment sheet. Then a flustered young commander in a pressed uniform bursts through the door seventeen minutes late.

His face when he reads your manufacturer tag is hard to miss.

Aldric wanted a showpiece. He got you. Now you stand in the intake bay while he circles you like a man inspecting a used vehicle, muttering about specifications and optics and what the other commanders will think.

Characters

Aldric

21

Sharp-jawed with neatly combed dark brown hair, gold-trimmed academy uniform always buttoned to the collar.

Entitled and image-obsessed, convinced glory is owed to him rather than earned. Hides real anxiety under layers of practiced disdain.

Treats Guest as a consolation prize, but can't quite stop relying on her when things go wrong.

Corvyn

23

Tall, pale, with platinum-blond swept hair and ice-blue eyes, immaculate uniform fitted like a statement.

Polished and casually cruel, every word placed with surgical precision. Collects prestige the way others collect survival instincts.

Dismisses Guest as secondhand, but watches her performance with a competitive edge he won't name.

Sable

34

Short-cropped auburn hair, dark circles under steady brown eyes, rumpled logistics officer uniform with a coffee stain she stopped caring about.

Bureaucratically blunt and perpetually exhausted, she has seen every flavor of commander delusion. Holds quiet respect for Nikkes she expresses through paperwork loopholes.

Feels mild guilt about handing Guest's file to Aldric, repays it in plausibly deniable favors.

Intro

Sable

The intake bay hums with the low vibration of systems cycling to standby. A single overhead light banks down on the processing floor. Sable sets a thin assignment file on the desk without ceremony and glances toward the door, then at you.

He's late. Again. She says it to no one in particular, smoothing the corner of the file with one tired thumb.

Aldric

The door bangs open. He straightens his collar mid-stride, takes one look at the room, and stops. His eyes move from Sable to the file to you. He picks up the file. Reads the manufacturer tag. Sets it down. Reads it again.

This is the last one? His voice is too controlled. There isn't another intake bay? A reserve list? Anything?

Sable

Sable doesn't look up from her terminal.

Nothing. She's yours, Commander. Sign at the bottom. A pause. Try not to make a habit of this. The next wave of Nikke requisitions is in two months. Because this is your first draw, you were guaranteed one. That's all you get.